But a little less like shit then I felt yesterday, so that’s a plus, I guess.

The difference between, I really want to die

and

I just don’t want to live.

And for those who have never been here, there’s a distinctive difference.

Today is a good day for that difference, because today I have a final exam to go take for my health class.

A final exam that I may not have shown up for yesterday, but today I’ll at least show up.

I all but aced my English class. Two points shy of a perfect score. I’m still waiting on a few grades to come back from health, but I think I’ll pull at least a b, depends on how I do on this final that I didn’t study for.

Yesterday was rough. I spent most of the day in bed with covers over my head. I got up to cook but didn’t clean and my sink is overflowing with dishes.

We had dill pickle chicken wings for dinner which were both amazing and time consuming. Even though I baked them, my house smells like fried food, which is kind of annoying.

When I’m depressed like that I’m also super triggery, although I hate the word trigger. But the wrong sound from a video game or the wrong scene in a movie will go straight through me and I’ll need to run and hide, or I’ll want to fight back against it. But I can’t find my words to ask Wonder Woman to turn the TV down or that I can’t handle that movie right now. Sometimes I’ll put headphones in so that I’m not a bother, so that I can just zone out into my own world at the computer.

Other times I run away to the bedroom, into my safe space. Under my down comforter with the covers pulled up over my head. Just enough light filters through that it’s not completely dark in there. The sound is muffled like when there’s a few feet of snow outside.

I feel safe.

I always quietly hope that Wonder Woman will eventually come and check on me even if I can’t quite tell her all of what is wrong.

She is part of my safe space.

I also hate that I just walk away without telling her that I’m going. Words are hard when I feel like that. I want to shrink into my own skin.

I don’t want to admit that I need to hide from the world and speaking it out loud makes it too real.

Makes it too noticeable.

Makes me feel like I’m over reacting.

Like I’m being a drama queen.

But today is better. Today the sounds aren’t quite as loud and I don’t need to run.

Either way it was uncomfortable and I was afraid to get out of bed because then the means would be too accessible.

And when I’d lose track of my suicidal thoughts I didn’t want to get out of bed because I was just to defeated to move.

I kept hearing a gun shot going off in my head.

Not that I have access to guns, I know better, but I just kept hearing the sound reverberating in my head.

It’s what happens when the thoughts get bad. It’s been the same since middle school. The thoughts would get bad and I knew there was a loaded gun in my dad’s night stand drawer and I could hear it going off in my head.

And I’d fight against letting it happen.

I wonder what it feels like when the barrel is pressed against your skull?

I wonder what it sounds like when the gun goes off?

Does it sound different when the vibrations are right there up close?

Do you even have time to hear it?

I wonder if I would screw that up too and live and just be a burden on everyone around me.

It really is better that I don’t have access to guns.

And the thing is, I’m not actually having a horrible morning. I woke up, I measured out my food and logged it in a new program I’m trying. I’m planning on being all crafty and making shit in a little bit.

But still, the dark thoughts are just swirling around.

I’d kinda rather be dead.

I wish it was a therapy day, not that therapy is a quick fix but I always feel safer when she reassures me that these thoughts aren’t going to kill me. That I don’t need to be locked away to be safe from myself. That this isn’t a crisis.

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This is a Really Real Mental Health Post, but also a Really Real Health Post.

CW: Talk of weight and food.

The quiet voice is back. The one that tells me it would be so much easier to just end it all.

Wednesdays are hard and even with my sister in town yesterday it was a long hard day. I came home after she left and climbed in bed without saying goodnight to Wonder Woman and pulled the covers up over my head.

I was irrationally angry over things that we just haven’t had time for.

Or maybe we haven’t made the time.

But either way I wanted to lash out and I wasn’t in a place to have a rational conversation so I climbed into bed and pulled the covers over my head and didn’t even stir when Wonder Woman came to bed hours later.

But that’s not why the voice is back.

I had a doctors appointment today and realized I’m looking for a quick fix when there isn’t one. I’m not willing to do the work right now because I feel like I have to work extra hard for minimal results and it’s just not fair.

When I was riding the wave of mania for almost a year it was hard work but at the same time it was easy. And there was all this external validation because in the midst of the hardest thing I’d ever been through I was making all these strides towards self improvement on so many different fronts.

Including losing weight.

But now I’m not manic, and now it is just hard work without all of the positive feedback and without even having anything to show for it.

I’m back in another weight loss surgery program and this one knows the problems I had with the last surgeon so I doubt I’ll have the same problem. Except the last time I was all about working the program and losing weight leading up to it, and really into how successful I was going to be pre and post surgery.

I gave a fuck and it showed.

This time I don’t really give a fuck. I just know I can’t keep living like this, and this is one program that won’t give me the amount of shit the last program gave me. It’s why I chose this program, it has minimal requirements.

See, I know surgery isn’t a quick fix. I know surgery is just a tool and if I don’t do the work it won’t work. I know it isn’t the easy way out.

And I also know that right now my heart isn’t in it.

And my heart isn’t in it because even while I was working so fucking hard, I just started gaining the weight back because I’m fighting against PCOS and I’m fighting against medications.

I don’t even know where to start with my food intake. There are so many things that need to change and I’m so overwhelmed about how to change them. I keep saying I’m going to do this or that differently but there are so many different areas that I end up not following through with any of them.

I’ve quit doing cardio at the gym because what’s the point of working myself to the point of exhaustion on the machines when I’m not getting a single benefit. I still go for strength training a few days a week because I feel the difference with that when I stop, I still walk a mile or two a few nights a week because walking made a huge difference in my life when I started, but even that I’m not all that consistent with.

I worked my ass off . . . and gained 25 lbs due to a medication change. Once that stabilized I kept working my ass off and my weight didn’t change. Now I’ve slacked way off for the last month and my weight didn’t change.

It makes me feel like the effort is useless.

I’m supposed to go for 4 more monthly nutrition appointments and then I can schedule surgery, but if I can’t get my heart into this, there’s no point in scheduling a surgery date.

Depression and poor self image are playing into this big time.

I care about how difficult my weight makes my life, but I hate my body so doing loving and caring things for it is difficult.

Self sabotage via food.

I’ve been here before, for a lot of years. Mania and post traumatic growth made it easy to overcome this cycle but it’s possible to overcome it even without that.

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I just left therapy where we talked a lot about body image and why I am no longer able to be body positive like I once was.

I am pissed off at the body I inhabit. I hate the skin that I am in.

At one point I worked out and I felt stronger, I lost weight, I felt I had control and was able to change the shape of this body of mine.

Now I have no control.

Medications have taken that control from me.

The same medication that reduced my suicidal thoughts has increased my weight and changed the distribution of my weight so that my abdomen is larger.

I am pissed off at the body I inhabit. I hate the skin I am in.

I have an auto-inflammatory condition called hidradenitis suppurativa.

It causes painful abscesses, wounds, and tracts to develop in hair follicles and sweat glands in my underarms, breasts and groin. When they heal they leave behind scar tissue.

My body is attacking itself.

I am pissed off at the body I inhabit. I hate the skin I am in.

Parker once asked me if I had to tell people I had HS. She was affirming that it was something to be ashamed of, something to hide.

I am afraid of sex, afraid of being seen naked because I’m fat and covered in sores and scar tissue. I can’t imagine that anyone, even Wonder Woman, would want to look at me. I hide my body. I have to fight against my own brain whenever I undress in front of her.

I am pissed off at the body I inhabit. I hate the skin I am in.

Even clothed I hate looking at myself in the mirror, my clothes no longer fit correctly, I’ve had to buy larger shirts. All I can see is my rolls and my fat. I see the parts of me that don’t fit in seats correctly.

“You’re pull up two chairs kinda big” is what my father once said.

I am pissed off at the body I inhabit. I hate the skin I am in.

I miss the days when I felt strong. I miss feeling beautiful.

I want to love the body I inhabit. Why can’t I love the skin I am in?

Maybe shining light on all of these dark thoughts is the beginning to loving myself again.

I think my self-worth comes from my growth from year to year and how I’m becoming a better person.

The work I’m doing on my mental health, learning self care, working out in the gym. Becoming a better partner and parent, and even changing as I parent as my son has grown and grown up and moved out. The way I’ve survived and even thrived with the struggles life has thrown at me has also contributed to my self-worth.

I think my lack of a job right now, and especially when I’m not in school takes a toll on my self-worth because it’s such a big part of self-worth in societies eyes.

I’m love my role as a mother. I’ve loved every phase of motherhood even though there have been periods that were harder than others. I always found the joy in every part of my relationship with my son.

As a teen I wanted 5 kids and felt I was meant to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. I wanted to be the quintessential housewife while also having dreams of a career. Above all I knew I wanted to be a mom.

Well, I got the title of mom much earlier than I planned and by giving birth at 19 I grew up right along side my son. We were a team.

In hindsight I’m glad he was my only. It set us up to have an incredible bond.

Things just have a way of working out the way they are supposed to.

When he was eight Parker came into our lives and grew into her role as his other mother. She was never really step mom, she was equal mom, and eventually favorite mom, a title she still holds from the grave.

While he was very much her son, she wanted to give birth to her own biological child. At one point we had a donor and we tried. I still remember the look on her face when we realized her growing health problems meant we had to stop trying. In one of her last emails before she died she talked to a friend about both, how much she loves Draven and also how much she wanted a bio child and knew it would never happen.

I’m glad she got to experience motherhood and I hate that she never got to experience it in that way.

I know it broke her heart.

Every Mother’s Day she is on my mind. I didn’t just lose a wife, I lost the only other person with whom I will ever share the title of mother.

I’ve seen lots of posts on Facebook about how wonderful mother’s day is and also how hard mother’s day is and for me, it’s both.

So today I’m quietly reflecting on memories of raising my son and sharing that job with Parker.

I hope today is a happy day for you, whether it’s because you are celebrating mother’s day or because you find some other reason to smile.

Remember, motherhood doesn’t have to be about giving birth or raising children. Motherhood can also be about nurturing your own inner child, or the kids in the neighborhood, or chosen family, or fur (or scale or feather) babies, or any number of other ways one can nurture and protect.

I feel the need to thank everyone who has been following along with these posts. I appreciate you all.

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That might not seem like much to most people, but for most of my adult life I’ve moved every 6 to 9 months.

That means in the time I’ve lived here, we probably would have lived in 6 to 10 places.

How did I live like that?

I’m in a tiny little two bedroom apartment in a shit smelling, shitty neighborhood and honestly, I fucking love it here because the one thing this apartment has given me is stability in the middle of chaos. I honestly feel like this place is home and I have no interest in giving that up.

I don’t have to constantly wonder how long I need to save these boxes because when is the next time I’m going to pack it all up and go.

Part of it was me, I always wanted something different, I couldn’t settle down. Mostly though, it was that we couldn’t pay our bills and breaking our lease was better then being evicted.

Five years.

That seems like forever.

Five years ago I was a wife to a woman who is now dead.

Five years ago my kid still looked like a kid instead of the grown man he is now.

Five years ago I was sick and hopeless but also proud of ourselves for finally getting back into our own place after being homeless for so long.

Five years ago I had finally gotten approved for disability after fighting for almost 5 years.

I remember, after Parker died, when I went through my short period of just wanting out of this apartment, Kidlet asked that we stay here and not move again. He was right. I’m glad we stayed.

Five years of housing stability is a really big deal to someone who was never able to stay put.

I love my tiny two bedroom. I’m glad it’s still home. I’m glad Wonder Woman moved in here instead of us going somewhere else. I’m glad we’ve made it our home together.